MPAA Rejoices Over eDonkey Shutdown

The Motion Picture Association of America is claiming a major victory in the battle against illicit file sharing with the shutdown of a key server used to index content on the eDonkey2000 network. Razorback2 was the largest centralized server and was used by over 1 million file swappers.

The server's operator was arrested in Switzerland while the computers were seized from a hosting facility near Brussels. The MPAA heralded the arrest in a statement, saying the man's home was also searched for more information on those keeping eDonkey's 3.5 million-user P2P network running.

Even with the shutdown of Razorback2, however, eDonkey isn't likely to disappear any time soon. A decentralized method of indexing files on the network called Kademila, or KAD, has begun to pick up steam. The technology has been shown to outperform eDonkey2000's basic system for transferring large files.

In addition, eDonkey has proven resilient to legal attacks in the past. The network's creator, MetaMachine, is facing an RIAA lawsuit and said it was "throwing in the towel" last September. But an open source iteration of the software, known as eMule, continues to be developed and is now in use by the vast majority of eDonkey downloaders.

In testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in September, MetaMachine president Sam Yagan warned that, "The next generation of open P2P applications will travel even further down the road of anonymity and secrecy."